Bezos has said he wants to move heavy industry off of
Earth and into space to make "a very beautiful planet" and
colonize space.

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon - and the richest person on Earth - is
dead-set on launching a spacecraft to the moon and colonizing
space.

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Bezos' 18-year-old rocket company,
Blue Origin, said on Wednesday that it's "in the conceptual
design phase of a large lunar lander," shown above. Once
complete, the company expects the robot to deliver several metric
tons of cargo to the lunar surface.

The goal of the mission, called Blue Moon, is to eventually land
on the lunar surface and scout for resources like water, which
can be mined and
converted into rocket fuel. News of Blue Origin's
preliminary lunar plans emerged in 2017, but details about
the program are still evolving. The company has yet to provide a
timeline for the first mission.

Most recently, Blue Origin announced that it's part of a
non-profit organization called The Moon Race, which is also
backed by Airbus, the European Space Agency, and others. The
group aims to spur the creation of a lunar economy (and pick up
where the Google Lunar XPRIZE
left off) by teasing cash prizes for teams that develop ways
to produce energy, grow food, and build infrastructure on the
moon.

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"The future will be better for our children - and our children's
children - if we use space to benefit life on Earth and enable
millions of people to live and work in space," Blue Origin wrote
in an email about its efforts.

How and why Bezos wants to go back to the moon

Bezos is selling about $1 billion' worth of his Amazon stock
every year to fund Blue Origin's research and development.

That work includes building a suborbital tourism rocket called
New Shepard, as well as a much larger reusable rocket system
called
New Glenn, which is expected to debut in 2020. A
super-heavy-heavy-lift reusable rocket system, called New
Armstrong, is also in the works, though details about it are not
yet public.

Blue Origin's quest to build and launch a lunar lander comes as
Elon Musk and SpaceX are developing the aerospace company's fully
reusable
Big Falcon Rocket system. In September, Musk shared
new details about the BFR and revealed that a Japanese
billionaire
named Yusaku Maezawa would be SpaceX's first moon tourist.

SpaceX's primary goal is to
colonize Mars, whereas Blue Origin's is to move heavy
industry off of Earth and into space.

"I believe and I get increasing conviction with every passing
year, that Blue Origin, the space company, is the most important
work I'm doing," Bezos told Döpfner. "We will move all heavy
industry off of Earth, and Earth will be zoned residential and
light industry. It will basically be a very beautiful planet."

Bezos added: "The solar system can easily support a trillion
humans. And if we had a trillion humans, we would have a thousand
Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts and unlimited - for all
practical purposes - resources and solar power and so on. That's
the world that I want my great-grandchildren's
great-grandchildren to live in."

Read Blue Origin's full email

Blue Origin sent an email detailing its lunar mission plans on
Wednesday, as members of the company are attending an annual
meeting of the spaceflight industry called the
International Astronautical Congress.

Here's the main text:

Hi There,

Moving heavy industry from Earth into space is at the core of
Blue Origin's mission. The future will be better for our children
- and our children's children - if we use space to benefit life
on Earth and enable millions of people to live and work in space.

The next logical step in this path is a return to the moon. To do
this we need reusable access to the lunar surface and its
resources. Were in the conceptual design phase of a large lunar
lander that will provide that access called Blue Moon.

We are not alone in our drive to return to the moon, and there
have been some exciting updates this week at the 69th
Annual International Astronautical Congress in Bremen, Germany.

Blue has joined leading space companies and agencies to support
the creation of The Moon Race, a non-profit working
to launch a competition for teams looking for a ride to the lunar
surface. The goal is consistent with our aim to land large
payloads on the moon that can access and utilize the resources
found there. We're supporting this initiative, along with ESA,
Airbus, and other entities seeking to foster the next generation
of lunar exploration - with Blue Moon and New Glenn.